Simon Power and the law of unintended consequences

by Cameron Slater on June 24, 2011 at 9:04am

Former third rate provincial conveyancing lawyer, Simon Power has completely changed the laws around Financial Advisors, and as may be expected from a third rate provincial conveyancing lawyer he didn’t actually take into account the law of unintended consequences.

It is now illegal to provide financial advise to anyone unless you are a registered financial advisor, and Simon Power’s people at the FMA will give you a good kick in the arse if you try. Unfortunately for Simon Power there has been a lot of unintended consequences of this new law that this blog wants to highlight. There was little point in highlighting them through the Select Committee process as everyone who tried got the bums rush from Simon Power who didn’t realise many of the submitters were people who will be deciding what jobs they should offer him after he retires to appease his missus.

One interesting scenario is if you happen to have a mate called Terry who owns a lot of property but has got himself in a bit of strife for not pay bills to annoyingly bureaucratic and persistent outfits like ACC and the IRD due to being caught with his pants down in the middle of a major property bust.

So you happen to be having a few ouzos with your mate Terry and he asks you for your opinion of whether he should spend $1.5m of his mothers money on a nice man in the middle east that promises to refinance his property portfolio.

Being full of ouzo and forgetting that Simon Power has introduced new rules saying who is allowed to say what to who about financial matters without being “regulated”, you break the law by mentioning to your mate Terry that you happened to see the same middle eastern gentleman in the Sydney Morning Herald getting accused of ripping off a bunch of Australians with similar problems to Terry with similarly annoyingly bureaucratic and persistent Australian outfits.

You are overheard giving this “financial” advice to your good ouzo drinking mate Terry by some members of Simon Power’s new bureaucracy. They decide Simon Power would be very pleased with such a trophy case, considering the PR effort they have gone to deflect attention from their poor performance thus far, and especially when it is easy to prove when Terry is not drinking ouzo he is a financial wizz kid and doesn’t need unregulated advice from someone who doesn’t have the new ticket Simon Power demands you have before offering financial advice.

This is blindingly obvious as a hypothetical situation that would never happen provided Simon Power‘s people act with common sense, but if they decide to follow the law closely they could actually prosecute this blogger for offering Terry financial advice via this video.

Other blindingly obvious hypothetical cases will appear on the blog in the next few weeks.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. And when he’s not creating the news, he tends to be in it, with protagonists using the courts, media and social media to deliver financial as well as death threats.

They say that news is something that someone, somewhere, wants kept quiet. Cam Slater doesn’t do quiet, and as a result he is a polarising, controversial but highly effective journalist that takes no prisoners.